18 ROAD, TRACK, AND STABLE. 



history of the trotting horse will perceive the truth 

 of this statement. 



I read lately of a former well known M. F. H. who 

 kept an enormous equine establishment, and yet 

 among all his men there was but one tit to be in- 

 trusted with the exercise of his best hunters. 



To create the trotter, increasing his speed within 

 seventy-five years from a mile in 2.40 to a mile in 

 2.08|, was perhaps an even greater achievement than 

 the development of the modern thoroughbred in the 

 one hundred and fifty years that have elapsed since 

 the importation to England of the Godolphin Arabian. 

 The utility of the achievement is another matter ; and 

 I should confess to some sympathy with the critic 

 who was inclined to estimate it lightly. But what- 

 ever we may think of the result, whether or not we 

 hold that a 2.08 horse is greatly better than a 2.40 

 horse, the value of the process by which this result 

 was reached can hardly be exaggerated. The trainers 

 of the American trotter have taught the world the 

 best lesson that it has ever received in the ethics of 

 horse-keeping. 



The case of Johnston, the famous pacer, illustrates 

 what can be accomplished by humoring the sensitive 

 equine disposition. " He was," writes John SjiLan, 

 his trainer and driver, " the most nervous horse that 

 I ever saw, and I found that in shipping him about 

 from one track to another he became more nervous 

 and irritable. If you left him long alone in the stable, 

 he would tramp around like a wild animal, and get 

 himself in a sweat. If anybody went into the stall 

 next to him, and began to hammer or make anything 

 like a loud noise, he would try to climb out of the 



